HERITAGE FLORIDA JEWISH NEWS, JANUARY 11, 2019 PAGE 5A
ar never
By Martin Sherman
(JNS)--If the "West Bank"
was part of the "Hashemite
Kingdom" up to 1967, how
did it suddenly become the
Palestinians' long-yearned-
for homeland which, up until
then, they were submissively
willing to cede to an alien
potentate?
Not since the time of Dr.
Goebels, head of the Nazi pro-
paganda machine, has there
ever been a case in which con-
tinual repetition of a lie has
born such great fruits Of all
the Palestinian lies, there is no
lie greater or more crushing
than that which calls for the
establishment of a separate
Palestinian state in the West
Bank.--From "Palestinian
Lies," by former far-left Meretz
Education Minister, Profes-
sor Amnon Rubinstein, July
30, 1976.
As the new elections ap-
proach, the "Palestinian
problem" is once again likely
to dominate much of the in-
ter- (and intra-) party debate.
To demonstrate this, imagine
for a moment that the 1967
Six-Day War never took place.
Imagine that Israel had not
been compelled to launch
a preemptive strike in self-
defense to thwart the Arabs'
openly proclaimed aim of total
genocide that resulted in it
taking over Judea-Samaria,
which the Palestinians now
contend is their long-yearned
for homeland.
Then ask yourself: If that
war had not occurred, where
would "Palestine" be?
After all, but for this war,
the "West Bank" would not
have fallen under Israeli ad-
ministration. Surely then, the
Palestinians would have no
grievances against the Jewish
state and there would be no
charges of Israel "occupying
Palestinian lands" and dispos-
sessing the "Palestinians"
from their "homeland."
Sadly, this is not the case.
Charges of "occupation" of
Palestinian land and dispos-
session of the Palestinians
were widespread long before
Israel had control of a square
inch of the "West Bank."
Indeed, as early as March
8, 1965, over two years before
the Six-Day War, GamalAbdel
Nasser, president of Egypt,
proclaimed his bloodcurdling
intent: "We shall not enter
Palestine with its soil covered
in sand, we shall enter it with
its soil saturated in blood."
But what "Palestine" was
he referring to? It certainly
was not the "West Bank"
and Gaza, which were under
Jordanian and Egyptian rule
respectively. It could only be
the territory within the pre-
1967 borders of Israel.
Similarly savage senti-
ments were expressed by Ah-
mad Shukeiri, Yasser Arafat's
predecessor as chairman of
the PLO. Indeed, only days
prior to the outbreak of the
Six-Day War, in a somewhat
premature flush of triumph,
he crowed: "D Day is ap-
proaching. The Arabs have
waited 19 years for this and
will not flinch from the war
of liberation "
Ominously, he threatened:
"This is a fight for the home-
land; it is either us or the
Israelis."
Here again, Shukeiri's use
of the words "liberation" and
"homeland" is revealing and
damning for current Palestin-
ian claims.
After all, they clearly did
not apply to the "West Bank"
or the Gaza Strip, since both
were under Arab rule and
certainly not considered the
"homeland" toward which
Palestinian "liberation" ef-
forts were directed.
The true significance of
these terms emerges with
stark clarity from the text
of the original version of the
Palestinian National Charter
formulated in 1964, a full
three years before the "West
Bank" fell under Israeli ad-
ministration.
Article 24 stipulates pre-
cisely what was not included in
the "homeland" of"Palestine"
andwhere sovereigntywas not
sought to be exercised. Indeed,
it unequivocally forswears
Palestinian claims to "any ter-
ritorial sovereignty over the
West Bank in the Hashemite
Kingdom of Jordan and Gaza."
It is difficult to imagine a
more authoritative source for
exposing as bogus the Pales-
tinian claim that the "West
Bank" and Gaza comprise
their "ancient homeland."
This, of course, creates the
remarkably anomalous situa-
tion we have today.
On the one hand, the Pai-
estinians profess that they are
willing to forego all the terri-
tory they claimed as their pre-
1967 "homeland," but on the
other, obdurately demand for
their post-1967 "homeland" a
completely different territory,
which they explicitly excluded
from their previous homeland
demands.
This is not a trivial matter.
For a sense of nationalism is
driven by a sense of belong-
ing, inextricably associated
with geographical sites in the
homeland, where great events
took place that generated a
distinct national historical
memory and consequent
coherent national identity.
But if such nation-gener-
ating sites were located in
pre-1967 Palestine, what such
sites could there possibly be in
post-1967 Palestine thatcould
generate a sense of nation-
hood since the Palestinians
themselves conceded that,
up to 1967, it did not consti-
tute part of their homeland?
War on page 15A
By Ben Cohen
(JNS)--Imagine that you
are a Jewish doctor in a Nazi
concentration camp. About
100 of your fellow inmates
suffer from diabetes, and you
only have a limited supply of
insulin, with no guarantee of
more on the way. Do you give
each patient the same amount
regardless of individual need,
knowing that all of them will
likely die within a month? Or
do you reserve your supply for
those with a greater chance of
survival, meaning that those
with severe diabetes will die
much sooner as a result?
Or imagine that you are
the Greek Jewish teenager
from Salonika who's picked
up enough German from
polishing the boots of the Nazi
officers occupying your city
that when you are eventually
deported to Auschwitz, your
linguistic abilities land you a
low-level clerical job, instead
of a spot in the gas chamber.
In the camp administrative
office, you have access to the
index-card system that as-
signs each prisoner to a differ-
ent slave-labor brigade--most
of which involves punishing
physical work in the freezing
outdoors, with the risk of
frostbite, pneumonia, beat-
ings or even execution for
those deemed by the guards
to be slacking off.
One of your fellow prison-
ers, who is near death, begs
you to sneak his card into the
box of a different brigade, one
with lighter duties. As long
as your Nazi overlords don't
catch you, it's in your power
to do that. But if you decide
to help your friend, then you
have to switch his card out
with that of another person
from the same brigade, and
then that person spends his
or her days facing snow, ice
and death from starvation.
What do you do? And, come to
think of it, how on earth did
you end up in this position?
The above documented
examples arewhatmany Holo-
caust scholars and educators
like to describe as "choiceless
choices"--appalling moral
dilemmas faced by a people
thatwere systematically dehu-
manized by the Nazi regime,
and who knew that they faced
death at any second. They
formed part of an intense,
enriching four days that I
spent with a small group of
other writers and journalists
at Yad Vashem.
We were there to study and
discuss many aspects of the
Holocaust but we did so from
a starting point that the way
we teach younger generations
about the Nazi attempt to
destroy the Jews of Europe
and North Africa is changing
radically.
Holocaust survivors have
all reached advanced ages.
There won't be any in-person
testimonies to listen towithin
a few years (even if we are left
with their accounts captured
on video, holograms or other
forms of visual reproduc-
tion.) Since 1945, countless
other genocides have wreaked
havoc in the Balkans, much
of Africa, Asia and the Middle
East, while a few of those that
occurred before--the Herero
nation slaughtered by German
colonists in southern Africa,
the Armenians annihilated by
Turkey--to this day remain
under-recognized. Is the Ho-
locaust any more important
than these other demonstra-
tions of inhumanity in the
world?
And there's more, much
more. In countries like Lithu-
ania and Ukraine, wartime
collaborators with the Nazis
are now being lionized as anti-
Communist heroes. The Is-
raeli government walks along
an undignified diplomatic
tightrope with these states,
having to balance present-day
bilateral relations with guard-
ianship of the Holocaust's
truths. Elsewhere, some
Holocaust-commemoration
activities are so fixated with
a universalist approach that
basic facts about the Jewish
character of the genocide--
like the young diarist Anne
Frank having been Jewish,
and being deported because
she was Jewish--are buried
in a bid to be "meaningful"
to "everyone."
Meanwhile, in Western
Europe and the United States,
social protest movements, like
the "Yellow Vests" in France
and the Women's March in
America, have been penetrat-
ed by Holocaust-deniers, anti-
Semitic conspiracy-mongers
and advocates of Israel's
elimination. And that's not to
mention those who don't deny
the Holocaust, but who do de-
light in invoking the Nazis as
a metaphor for Israeli policies
towards the Palestinians or
go the whole hog by making
fun of it in front of receptive
crowds in theaters.
In the recent past, perhaps
the key Holocaust debate
was why the Allied powers
did so little to stop it. During
our group's exchange with
Avner Shalev, the chair of
Yad Vashem who pioneered
its renewal over the last two
decades, he related the story
of guiding President George
W. Bush around the institute's
impressive museum. When
they reached the exhibit
about President Franklin D.
Rooseveit's response to the
Holocaust, Bush turned to his
then national security adviser,
Condoleezza Rice, and asked:
"Why didn't FDR bomb the
camps? He should have."
But that burning question
has been superseded by an
even more vexing one: Why
should we seek to educate
about the Holocaust in a
worldwhere the phrase"Never
Again" sounds farcical to
many people? There are many
answers, and to my mind,
there are three key ones.
First, there are still some
survivors of the Holocaust.
I think specifically of a man
named Albert de Leeuw and
150 other former child labor-
ers in the Amsterdam ghetto,
who have still not received
proper compensation from
the German government, and
who continue fighting for that
recognition in the twilight of
their lives. To abandon them
now would be shameful.
Second, however much
people believe politics has
changed with the rise of
populism on left and right
Teaching on page 15A
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y wron:
By Alexandra
Pucciarelli
Since it came into our
lives last year, I've had
mixed feelings about "The
Marvelous Mrs. Maisel." Its
jokes sometimes feel like the
kind of things we say among
other fellow Jews, but not
to the rest of the world. The
show does have a comforting
familiarity that makes it easy
to binge watch; I watched the
whole first season in a single
day. It's like the matzah ball
soup of TV shows: It feels like
home, with all of the wonder-
ful and less-than-wonderful
associations that home can
have.
One of its more discom-
fiting aspects (besides the
mostly non-Jewish staff and
cast--a subject for a different
article) is the character of As-
trid, Midge's sister-in-law and
recent convert to Judaism.
In the newly released second
season, she is treated as the
butt of a joke rather than a
whole person with a full life.
She appears infrequently
and always for a laugh, never
advancing the plot. She is
one-dimensionally trying so
hard to be Jewish in a way
that does not feel authentic.
Full disclosure: My father is
a convert to Judaism, and my
fiance is currently undergo-
ing the conversion process.
So when portrayals of Jew-
ish converts in pop culture
miss the mark, I feel it on a
personal level.
When I look at Astrid, I see
a woman who is trying her
best. She goes to Israel 11
times as a means to impress
her in-laws and prove her
Jewishness. My fiance echoed
this sentiment--that as a
convert, you feel you have
to prove that you are Jewish,
unlike those who were born
into the faith. It is hard to be
accepted as part of the group,
and Astrid takes her Judaism
to the extreme by constantly
using Yiddish phrases and
pointing out the positives of
Judaism to those around her.
This is especially evident
in season 2, which mostly
takes place in a classic Jew-
ish Catskills resort. Astrid
is much more religiously
observant than the family
that surrounds her, like when
she fasts for Tisha b'Av, the
saddest day on the Jewish
calendar, while the rest of
her family eats a hearty
breakfast unaware of this day
of mourning.
Converts are known to be
more religiously strict than
their born-Jewish counter-
parts, and "The Marvelous
Mrs. Maisel" brings this
trope to the extreme. Therein
lies the problem: In this
extremity, Astrid becomes
a thing to laugh at---look at
the dumb goy, she doesn't
get what it really means
to be Jewish. One moment
that particularly sticks out
is when Astrid returns from
Israel for the llth time with
huge mezuzahs that she gives
Midge and her mother. Her
gift is seen as clueless rather
than thoughtful. Later in the
episode she gives Midge's son
a set of rabbi playing cards,
which the other characters
also view as foolish.
My fiance and I both found
Astrid's portrayal pretty
cringe worthy. It would be
fine for there to be a run-
ning joke about Astrid the
convert, but the fact that
this is her only characteristic
on the show is problematic.
She could be Super Jew, but
she could also be known as a
super dresser or super smart
!iii!iiii ilSiiiiii!Jii!i!i!!ii,i!
or so many other things. But
no, she's the token convert.
Many people already are
leery about converts to Ju-
daism (especially those who
convert "for spouses"), and
this kind of portrayal in the
media doesn't help.
This article originally ap-
peared on Alma.
Alexandra Pucciarelli is a
writer based in New York. She
received her bachelor's degree
from Sarah Lawrence College
and is currently a graduate
student of the sociology of col-
lective memory and trauma
at the New School for Social
Research. She has written
for Tablet Magazine, The L
Magazine, Blood + Milk, and
Brooklyn Magazine.